Just two weeks ago, Google made it easier to share video clips with family and friends with the updated Picasa 3 software. Now it has gone a step further and has given Picasa 3 users the ability to edit their videos before posting them.The latest update to Picasa 3 aims to take on Apple's iMovie software, in a way. Being a Mac user, I find iMovie 08 a great tool to use for editing and creating videos. Picasa 3, which is a free download for Windows machines, provides many of the same features.

Picasa 3 will let users zoom the video size with a slider, play the video in full screen, or rotate a video -- just as with photos. If you happen to find a particular frame interesting, you can click the "Take Snapshot" button, and Picasa will capture the frame in its native size, saving it in a "Captured Videos" album.

iMovie 08 makes it pretty easy to trim videos of unnecessary footage. Picasa 3's "In" and "Out" buttons allow you to set start and end points for your clip, or you can simply drag the two triangle markers under a video. Don't worry about making a mistake -- just like with its photo editing features, Picasa provides full Undo and Redo. If you're happy with your edits, and want to save the polished results, just click "Export Clip". Picasa will save a new copy in your "Exported Videos" album.

iMovie also has built-in tools to let you export and compress video. Picasa does, too. It will compress movies into a smaller file, which saves disk space and makes uploading much faster.

Picasa 3 also has added a Movie Maker tool that provides more advanced features. It can be used to piece together video segments to create a longer work. Users can take advantage of Pan and Zoom to create transitions, add MP3s as a soundtrack, add titles and credits, and a lot more. Lastly, it gives you some options for setting the quality level of your videos, ranging from YouTube-friendly 320-by-240 all the way up to 1,080p (display resolution).